Trainers and facilitators
Sabita Banerji
Sabita is an international development professional with over 15 years’ experience of internal and external communications, programme learning, monitoring and evaluation. She worked with Oxfam GB for over 12 years, latterly with particular emphasis on HIV response programmes. She has worked as a consultant with charities, Fairtrade organisations and campaigns, and now works on Knowledge and Learning at the Ethical Trade Initiative.
She has supported development practitioners – as individuals, groups and organisations - all over the world, with learning, communications, knowledge management and monitoring and evaluation initiatives. Her approach is highly participatory, informative, imaginative and fun.
Simon Batchelor
Simon Batchelor is a director of Gamos Ltd, and has 30 years’ experience of the development sector. His role covers a wide range of topics including monitoring and evaluation, and the role of Information and Communication Technology. He is a consultant on impact and learning for IDS, the Institute of Development Studies, and regularly trains on Outcome mapping for ODI, the Overseas Development Institute, which hosts the Outcome Mapping Learning Community.
Bill Bruty
Bill Bruty has been a professional fundraiser since 1984 and worked as Director of External Affairs for BTCV, as Marketing Director for Children's Aid Direct and as Community Fundraising Manager for Scope. He has tutored in fundraising and management for the Directory of Social Change and the Open University Business School, and has delivered training in fundraising to over 200 clients, ranging from UNICEF UK and ActionAid to small community based agencies in the UK, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania.
Since 2002 he has run his own business, Fundraising Training Ltd, which specializes in training people who are new to a career in fundraising. Bill provides strategic advice and mentoring to national organisations such as the National Union of Students, Diabetes UK, the Brooke and the Medical Foundation for Care of Victims of Torture.
John Cammack
John Cammack is an independent consultant and trainer. He was Head of international finance at Oxfam GB and Senior lecturer in accounting and financial management at Oxford Brookes University. His training and consultancy work includes financial management for non-specialists, training trainers, and programme and financial management reviews for southern partners.
John has worked internationally with a range of relief and development agencies, including the Aga Khan Foundation, Amnesty International, Camfed, European Commission, Homeless International, Intrac, WaterAid and VSO. John is author of Building capacity through financialmanagement (Oxfam, 2007), Basic accountingfor small groups (Oxfam, 2003) and Financialmanagement for development (Intrac, 2000). John is a qualified accountant, manager and teacher and specialises in the non-profit sector. He holds a MSc in international development management and an MBA.
Ian Chandler
Ian Chandler is founder of The Pressure Group, a consultancy working with non-for-profit organisations to improve their effectiveness in advocacy, campaigning, communications and management. He has worked in advocacy for over 25 years, and has been Campaigns Manager for Oxfam GB and Media Director for Amnesty International. As a consultant, he has worked with over 70 leading NGOs in 47 countries in Europe, America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean.
Eleanor Cozens
Eleanor Cozens has 20 years experience of working in the international development sector. She has been responsible for country programmes for CARE in Comoros and Iraq and for VSO in Sri Lanka and the Maldives. She has recently done in-depth work developing the principles and practice for Sightsavers International's programme partnership policy, including tools, guidelines and an organisational induction programme, training manual and materials.
Eleanor has worked with a wide range of partner organisations: government ministries and institutions, NGOs, disabled people's organisations and small community-based organisations. She has developed and delivered training courses for Sightsavers and VSO volunteers, with an emphasis on practical implications and examples. Eleanor now works as an independent consultant on a variety of assignments: evaluations, briefing papers, policy drafting, and facilitation, and she retains a strong interest in partnership working.
Harish Davda
Harish Davda has been in training and development for over 20 years. He has worked as a senior manager in an educational environment and taught extensively in colleges and a London-based business school.
He has recently delivered training in management, leadership, team development and project management to corporate and public sector managers in Nigeria, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. In the UK he has delivered management skills, strategy and leadership training to a wide variety of NGOs including Amnesty International, Greenpeace UK, and refugee organisations.
As well as his teacher training, Harish has a MBA and is a qualified Neuro-Linguistic Programming practitioner. He has just completed an e-book on project management.
Jane Davies
Jane Davies has designed and delivered training for many different audiences worldwide including teachers, humanitarian workers and volunteers.
Jane started working in development in Kenya in 1998 as a VSO volunteer. This was followed by four years as Senior Education Officer with ActionAid, and several months managing an education project in Peru. Jane has practical humanitarian experience gained from working in the response to the 2007 Peru earthquake. Since 2008 she has been working as a trainer full-time.
Jane has an MA in Education and International Development as well as a Post Graduate Certificate in Education.
Jonathan Ellis
Jonathan Ellis is head of policy, research and advocacy at British Red Cross and a visiting lecturer on the MA in political communication at City University. From 2007 to 2011 he was director of advocacy at the British Refugee Council.
He is also author of Campaigning for Success - how to cope if you achieve your campaign goal (NCVO 2007), is an external adviser on NCVO's Certificate in Campaigning and leads training sessions on INTRAC's global advocacy courses. He is a member of NCVO's Campaigning Effectiveness advisory group and is a campaign coach for the Sheila McKechnie Foundation. He was for five years the Director of the Empty Homes Agency, an independent national charity, and before that was a campaign manager for OXFAM.
Rachel Haynes and María-José Perez
Rachel brings 18 years experience of working in the INGO sector applying to and managing large grants from institutional donors to fund international development. Rachel has worked on INGO monitoring and evaluation systems at project, programme and organisational level, has an MA in Development Management, and is currently studying Gender and International Development at Masters level. She was previously co-chair of the Bond Funding Working Group.
With more than 15 years of experience within the aid sector, María-José has worked for a variety of British and Guatemalan NGOs and for the Spanish NGDO platform; she was Head of Programme Funding at Practical Action up until recently. She co-chaired Bond’s EC Funding Group of which she was an active member for many years. María-José has a MA in Latin American studies and is fully bilingual.
Rutger Hopster
Rutger Hopster worked for 12 years for the European Commission, three years for DFID’s Europe Department and was part of the UK’s Foreign Office team that helped negotiate the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty.
In the Commission, Rutger managed development projects, implemented the decentralisation of aid to 17 EU offices and worked for four years directly for EuropeAid’s Director General, gaining an insider EU knowledge. He has worked with the Balkans, Russia, the EU Neighbourhood region and Africa.
Now a freelance consultant, in 2011 he reviewed progress on the European External Action Service (EEAS) for Concord.
Angela James
Angela runs the Bond EC Funding Advice Line, giving information and guidance on all aspects of applying and reporting to the European Commission. She also works freelance with NGOs in the UK, Europe and developing countries as a trainer and funding adviser. Before that she worked for several years in sub-Saharan Africa for the international development NGO ACORD, first as a manager of overseas development projects and then as fundraising co-ordinator dealing with a range of institutional donors, trusts, foundations and NGOs.
Greta Jensen
Greta has 20 years experience in technical and management consultancy for a variety of INGOs, working with education, environmental regeneration, appropriate technology and community development programmes, as well as development education initiatives in Europe. Clients have included the European Commission, Auroville International UK, Plan UK, Plan Pakistan, Y-Care, CAMFED, ACTSA and the Development Education Association. She draws on her Masters in Psychosynthesis Psychotherapy from Middlesex University to bring an experiential dimension to learning and has developed a unique process approach to logical framework analysis and project cycle management with groups of diverse stakeholders in the field.
Maureen O'Flynn
Maureen is a freelance consultant who has worked in the development sector for over 25 years. She has extensive experience of both the development and humanitarian contexts.
Maureen's key areas of expertise include rights-based approaches to development, impact assessments, organisational development, change management and strategic planning. She has worked extensively in East Africa and South East Asia, as well as many shorter assignments in many other parts of the world. Her client base includes small, local NGOs, INGOs such as Save the Children, Action Aid and Oxfam, and UN agencies, such as UNICEF and UNHCR.
Costanza de Toma
Costanza is an independent consultant, trainer and facilitator. She has 10 years experience working in international development for NGOs including Marie Stopes International, Save the Children and Bond itself She has planned and implemented campaigns in the UK, the EU and internationally.
Costanza worked in Brussels for 4 years as assistant to an Italian MEP and heading the office of Marie Stopes International. She worked for Bond as EU Policy Officer and was elected to represent Bond at CONCORD for 2004-2007. Costanza has an insider's knowledge of EU institutions and first hand experience of successfully influencing the EU on the effectiveness of aid, the participation of civil society organisations, child rights, HIV/AIDS and sexual and reproductive health.
Olivier Vardakoulias and Natalie Nicholles
Olivier is an analyst for nef consulting. He is a development and environmental economist focusing both on ‘hard’ quantitative analyses as well as policy analysis, a consequence of his background in politics and political economy.
His main expertise lies in the application of methods such as social cost-benefit analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis to environmental and development projects and interventions, whether at a micro level or macro scale.
Natalie is an Associate Director of nef consulting. She specialises in organisational strategy and triple bottom line impact. Natalie has led much of nef consulting’s work since 2009 on value for money in international development, and has worked with a number of INGOs.
She has a strong business management background, having previously worked for a FTSE 100 company and a leading leprosy and tuberculosis INGO.
Helen Wolfson
Helen Wolfson has spent twelve years campaigning with international development and environment organisations on aid, debt, trade, corporate accountability and climate change issues. She has worked to influence negotiations at the UN, WTO, World Bank and G8.
Until 2011 she was International Coordinator for Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Before that she worked as Head of Campaigns at CAFOD, and as a campaigner for ActionAid and Christian Aid. She is now working as a freelance campaigner and facilitator for a number of UK based NGOs.
Valli Yanni
Valli has been involved in international development since 1986, with experience in long term development projects in Egypt, Yemen and Ecuador.
Since 1995, she has been working independently in the areas of training, facilitation and consultancy with international NGOs including Oxfam, Plan International and Save the Children, academic institutions including Oxford Brookes University and Edinburgh University, and donor agencies including government bodies. Over the last few years, Valli has worked extensively in strengthening civil society through capacity building in the Middle East region.
Her main areas of expertise include project and programme evaluation using participatory techniques; strategic thinking and planning; governance and leadership skills; gender and development, cross-cultural communication, and health issues.
